Aug 15 2010

Still Sundays

August 15th.

What do you know beyond a reasonable doubt? Psyche & The City. “What has been blown away, cannot be found.” Calm Madness.

If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.


Back in New York. My affinity for the City is not just because of the obvious; in fact, it is the subtleties which draw me in. The complexity, paradox, the buzz of it all. Yes, found all places where humans exist but New York boasts it. Here you are challenged to really see beyond the obvious. Every. Single. Moment. And some don’t. I do. It is not always a pleasure. It is on a Sunday morning.

Artist Sarah McLachlan’s lyrics from “Elsewhere” are precisely representative of this invisible, yet very present, tranquility I find within the chaos of New York.


I love the time and in between
the calm inside me
in the space where I can breathe

I believe there is a distance I have wandered
to touch upon the years of reaching out and reaching in

holding out holding in

I believe this is heaven to no one else but me
and I’ll defend it as long as I can be
left here to linger in silence
if I choose to
would you try to understand

I am drunk in my desire. A whirling dervish I am still inside some swirling madness.

Continue reading


Mar 8 2010

Part 3 of 4: “All The King’s Horses and All The King’s Men…”

Where? What? When? How? Next?
Shedding light onto the most recent frequently asked questions from my closest friends to every other person…

In 2005 before I began law school we were required to finish the 800 page assigned reading, A Simple Justice, by a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist. It is the story of Brown v. Board of Education. Yes, 800 pages long! Some read it, some did not. Some did not want to admit they read it and enjoyed it! I couldn’t put it down—if history was written with this much diligence and passionate research I would have majored in History instead of English in college! I bring this up to share a quote by Charles Houston (creator of Howard Law School) which is somewhere in the book that has left a permanent imprint on my psyche. This quote resonates with me on an unprecedented level and remains my guiding pillar:  “A lawyer is either a social engineer or a pest to society.”

I had worked as an educator prior to going to law school.  I wanted to expand on my education reform commitment, a dedication innately embedded in my blueprint ever since I can recall, even prior to any outside influence of “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I am told by my maternal grandfather that even before I started formal schooling, as soon as I would learn something, anything, I would teach another.

Somewhere in the middle of my last job within the legal field, I instantly knew I had to leave the “system.” I worked for a great judge but my interaction with him was minimal and those with whom I had to interact shook my very core. The system thrived on mediocrity and incompetence, generally speaking; pepper and sprinkle an exception to the rule here and there.

I remain passionate about the law; I see it as the most empowering tool and feel privileged to have the wealth of knowledge I have attained through it. However, I also knew last June, given my experiences, I did not envision myself practicing in the public sectors of federal, state, and city law, or firm practices as I had known them—all of which encompass approximately 75% of the practice of law. Of the 25% which are left, 15% paid less than what I would make as a teacher and would be more akin to the role of a social worker than a lawyer. Therefore, I decided to give myself a year to see how I wanted to utilize my law degree given my public interest background.

In my humble view, ‘leaving the system’ is not really ‘beating the system’ yet I did not want to feel like I was part of the ‘disease’ even if I could never fully feel part of a ‘solution.’ This is not to say there is no value in working for the federal, state, city, or firm sectors, but at that point in my life, the value offered did not align with the value I sought.

Back to Part 4 of 4.


Mar 1 2010

Capitalism versus Open Society

The following is a transcript of a lecture given by George Soros at Central European University on October 29, 2009.

Statements that deeply resonated with me are in bold if you don’t care to read through the entire thing. Mr.  Soros is an inspiration and simply brilliant.

Thanks,
~a.q.s.

Today I want to explore the conflict between capitalism and open society, market values and social values. I am going to approach the subject indirectly, by first introducing a phenomenon that has attracted my attention only recently, but has assumed such importance in my thinking that I could almost call it the fourth pillar of my conceptual framework. That phenomenon is the principal-agent problem.

Agents are supposed to represent the interests of their principals, but in fact, they tend to put their own interests ahead of the interests of those whom they are supposed to represent. That is the agency problem.

It has been extensively analyzed by economists, but they look at it exclusively in terms of contracts and incentives and they largely disregard questions of ethics and values. Yet if you leave out ethical considerations the problem becomes pretty well intractable. Values like honesty and integrity lose their grip on people’s behavior and people become increasingly motivated by economic incentives.

By claiming to be value free, market fundamentalism has actually undermined moral values. Continue reading